Montgomery v. Carter County
| Decision Date | 09 August 2000 |
| Docket Number | 99-6440,Nos. 98-6403,s. 98-6403 |
| Parties | (6th Cir. 2000) Michael Montgomery, Administrator ad litem of the Estate of Mary L. Nave, Plaintiff-Appellant/ Cross-Appellee, v. Carter County, Tennessee, Jack Perkins, Highway Superintendent, Carter County, Tennessee, Carter County Commission, Dean Perry, et al., Carter County Commissioners in their individual and official capacities, Defendants-Appellees/Cross-Appellants, Luther Jean Hassell, a/k/a Jean W. Hassell, Defendant. Argued: |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Greeneville. No. 96-00509--Thomas G. Hull, District Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
Kathy Montgomery, Houston, Texas, for Appellant.
J. Patrick Ledford, William R. Berry, MOORE, STOUT, WADDELL & LEDFORD, P.C., Kingsport, Tennessee, for Appellees.
Before: COLE and GILMAN, Circuit Judges; TARNOW, District Judge*.
This case, which has been in federal court since 1996, arises from a dispute over the ownership of an eleven-foot wide strip of asphalt in Carter County, Tennessee. The plaintiff, the Estate of Mary Nave, contends that the strip is nothing more than the driveway to the decedent's rural residence. As far as Carter County is concerned, however, the contested stretch of asphalt is a county road and must remain a county road until the Tennessee state courts declare otherwise. Disagreeing, Mary Nave brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Carter County's refusal to abandon its claim to the driveway constitutes an unconstitutional taking of private property for a private use. Named as defendants were Carter County, the Carter County Commission, various county officials in both their individual and official capacities (collectively, the county defendants), and Mary Nave's next-door neighbor, Luther Jean Hassell.
The district court denied the county defendants' motion for summary judgment, but nevertheless dismissed Mary Nave's claims against them, concluding that her claims against the county defendants were not ripe for adjudication under the rule announced in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985). Mary Nave's estate has appealed the dismissal, and the county defendants have cross-appealed the district court's denial of their motion for summary judgment based both on qualified immunity and the alleged running of the statute of limitations. In addition, Mary Nave's estate has moved to dismiss the county defendants' cross-appeal as untimely filed. For the reasons set forth below, we DENY the estate's motion to dismiss the county defendants' cross-appeal as untimely, REVERSE the judgment of the district court to the extent that it dismissed the claims of Mary Nave's estate as premature, AFFIRM the judgment of the district court to the extent that it denied the county defendants' motion for summary judgment, and REMAND this case to the district court for further proceedings.
The residence of the late Queen Nave is located in Carter County, Tennessee. He (that is the correct pronoun) built a private driveway on his property between Siam Road, a public thoroughfare, and his garage many years ago. The driveway is slightly more than one-tenth of a mile long and is roughly eleven feet wide. Carter County road crews have pushed snow off of the driveway on several occasions and even paved it once in the early 1960s. The Nave family insists that the only reason why a county road crew paved the driveway was because the crew had a large amount of leftover asphalt after paving a nearby public road and received Queen Nave's permission to get rid of the excess asphalt by laying it down on the then-unpaved driveway.
But Queen Nave otherwise maintained the driveway. In 1977, for example, he replaced one of the driveway's two bridges after a flood destroyed it. Federal disaster-relief funds were distributed in Carter County after the flood. Queen Nave and his daughter, Shirley Montgomery, asked the then-serving county road superintendent about the possibility of obtaining federal funds in order to defray the cost of repairing the bridge, but were told that federal funds could only be used to repair county roads and bridges. The Naves were not eligible for federal disaster-relief funds, the road superintendent explained, because Queen Nave's bridge was a private bridge located on private property. In 1969, when Queen Nave's health was failing, his congressman submitted a postal petition on his behalf that resulted in the Postal Service delivering mail directly to his residence--which involved using the driveway--rather than to a mailbox on Siam Road. The postal petition was necessary because the driveway was considered to be private property.
After Queen Nave's death, the driveway was maintained by Nave family members, friends of the family, and persons hired by Mary Nave, Queen Nave's widow. Mary Nave lived on the property until her death in 1998. Ownership of the property has now passed to the Estate of Mary Nave.
No one else's property abuts the driveway. The driveway, however, is located very close to the property line separating the Naves' land from that owned by Luther Jean Hassell. Hassell's property has frontage on Siam Road, just as the Naves' property does. Nevertheless, since about 1980, Hassell has occasionally used the driveway that Queen Nave built rather than using her own unpaved driveway in order to get to and from Siam Road. While delivering the Naves' mail along the paved driveway, the Postal Service would also deliver Hassell's mail directly to her house as well.
In June of 1995, the Carter County Commission adopted an official county road list. On the list, the driveway was described as a county road named Queen Nave Road. How the driveway came to be designated as a county road is a mystery. There is no suggestion that the driveway was ever dedicated, granted, or otherwise given to Carter County. In fact, Carter County concedes that the listing of the driveway as a county road was, in all probability, simply a clerical error.
Mary Nave's daughter, Shirley Montgomery, who handled routine business matters for her mother, first found out about the designation when she asked Hassell to stop cutting across the Naves' paved driveway in order to get to and from Siam Road. Hassell responded by telling Shirley Montgomery that the paved driveway was a county road and, consequently, that the Naves could not stop her from using it. Shirley Montgomery then met with Jack Perkins, the Carter County Road Superintendent, on her mother's behalf. Perkins advised her that the driveway was listed on the county road map and the official county road list as Queen Nave Road, a county road. Although Perkins conceded that Carter County had no records of ever performing maintenance on Queen Nave Road, and that he had no idea how it came to be listed as a county road in the first place, he said that there was nothing he could do about it because Queen Nave Road was on the official county road list as adopted by the Carter County Commission.
At this meeting, Shirley Montgomery explained that Mary Nave had been the victim of two attempted robberies (one of which succeeded) in her home, and that she wanted to erect a fence and a gate on the driveway. Perkins replied that this would be illegal because Tennessee law prohibits the obstruction of public roads and that, because Queen Nave Road was listed in Carter County's official register as a county road, the driveway was a public road as far as Carter County was concerned. In addition, at an unspecified time, Mary Nave had part of the driveway excavated so that an underground water pipe could be repaired. Shirley Montgomery was advised by Jim Slemp, an official of the Carter County Road Department, that the digging violated state law because it was an obstruction of a public road, and that the "road" had to be repaired at the Naves' expense.
On July 14, 1995, Shirley Montgomery appeared before the Carter County Highway Committee on her mother's behalf, asking that the driveway be removed from the county road list and county road map. She took Highway Superintendent Perkins and several members of the Highway Committee to see the driveway for themselves, pointing out that no one besides Mary Nave and her tenant lived along the driveway, and that Hassell had her own dirt driveway and did not need to use the Naves' driveway in order to get to and from her house. On July 17, 1995, Shirley Montgomery appeared before the Carter County Commission, again asking that Carter County abandon its designation of Mary Nave's driveway as Queen Nave Road. The Carter County Commission voted to refer the matter to the Highway Committee and the county attorney for a recommendation.
Also on July 17, 1995, Kathy Montgomery, Mary Nave's attorney (and granddaughter), contacted the county attorney both by telephone and letter, requesting that the county road list be administratively corrected by removing Queen Nave Road from the list. In the letter, Kathy Montgomery stated that the Naves had owned the property for over one hundred and fifty years, that the driveway was part of the property, and that a full title search had revealed that the Naves had never conveyed the driveway to Carter County or anyone else. Three days later, the county attorney wrote Highway Superintendent Perkins, advising him that it appeared from Kathy Montgomery's letter that Carter County had erroneously listed the Naves' private driveway as a county road on its official road map and road list, and that the driveway should be removed from both. A copy of the letter was sent to Kathy Montgomery.
On August 3,...
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